


mmmm 



./A/v^A. 



f\/JS .' aaA' 



*/*/*> . . 



^AAA.Ai- 



aAAT^a 



<^AAf 



&WV\J?Vl 






I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Jl 



Lopgnghi ;Ya. . 



$ 

IJ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. j 



^W^aA.A, 






till 



w^MWM 






WS 



!\aA'a! 






iAiiaH^I 



Bra 



la'^sfiS 



'/AA'x'A 






rronT 



MJJdMJ 



i«i 



ximo. 






A'S^K 



W&MMkwmmm, 






mmmm 



m*mM0^mm» 



mmmmm^ 



te£i*«Sf 



«K«*dlt*af£fcQ!!riM 



TNH"i v ^^ 









Wmmm 



'^m 



ikMM^ 






mM&3 






STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH : 



%cttct$ to an ^nfciffcrcnt 2$dicto& 



A TKACT FOE PAEISH USE. 



BISHOP OF ^CENTRAL NEW YOEK. 

-f- 




IT^N 






NEW YORK : 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 

713 Broadway. 

1873. 



A "' 



\\& 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress,,. 




RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



These letters were written to meet an 
actual inquiry. It has been thought that they 
might be of some further service if transferred 
from the periodical — " The Churchman " — 
where they were first printed, to a pamphlet 
by themselves. This does not relieve me of 
the responsibility of the present publication, 
but it accounts for it. 

F. D. HUNTINGTON. 
Syracuse, 

Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, 1873. 



STEPS FROM A LIFELESS BELIEF 
TO A LIVING FAITH : 

BEING 

LETTERS TO AN INDIFFERENT BELIEVER. 



LETTER I. 

My dear Friend: You ask counsel 
because you need help. According to 
your own account, the state of your rnind 
is this : Intellectually, but no farther, you 
accept the Christian Revelation. Per- 
haps it would be more strictly accurate to 
say that you do not deny its truth, because 
you see no yalid reasons for denying it, or 
because you are not able to produce such 
reasons. It is rather a passive than an 
active assent. You are not disposed and 
not able to dispute the historical facts re- 
corded in the Christian Scriptures. You 
understand that for nearly eighteen hun- 



6 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

dred years the Record of those facts has 
been lying in the full view of the sharpest 
critics and most thorough scholars of the 
successive generations ; that, from various 
motives, many gifted and learned men, all 
along, have done their best to discover 
defects in that record, or to break up the 
evidence of its authenticity, by every line 
of argument that you are able to conceive 
of ; that to argument they have often 
added ridicule, satire, and abuse, in their 
keenest and most fascinating forms ; and 
yet that none of these strenuous efforts of 
unbelief, whether springing from pride, 
ambition, impatience of religious restraint, 
or the passion for independent investiga- 
tion, have been able to make a very pro- 
found or lasting impression on the general 
conviction of the reading and thinking 
world that what is related in the New 
Testament is true. All that has been ad- 
duced by way of objection has been fairly 
met and answered by students, who have 
devoted their lives impartially to the in- 
quiry. 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 7 

You also understand that the men who 
wrote these Scriptures, for the most part 
certainly, had the best possible opportu- 
nity, as eye-witnesses or otherwise, to know 
whether what they declared was true or 
not; that many of them were subjected 
to every kind of test and trial in their tes- 
timony, and suffered every kind of loss, 
agony, persecution, even to exile and 
martyrdom, for the sake of it ; that they 
lived consistent and pure lives, and were 
evidently made more upright, charitable, 
and devout, by what they believed and 
reported. All this you are ready to ad- 
mit. 

Furthermore, seeing that these Scrip- 
tures contain certain teachings or doc- 
trines, as well as narratives and statements 
of fact, and that the facts are the basis of 
the doctrines, and that the history is so 
interwoven with the moral and spiritual 
instruction that they cannot be taken apart 
without utterly destroying the integrity 
and sense of the writing, you are not pre- 
pared to reject the teachings themselves. 



8 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

Some of them are plainer and easier to 
receive than others ; some require expla- 
nation ; some deal with matters that are 
mysterious; some are in debate among 
Christians. But you have learned that 
this is what might be naturally expected 
from the character of the subjects touched, 
from the circumstance that the text of 
the Sacred Books has passed through a 
process of translation by which shades of 
meaning are modified, and from the con- 
fessed tendency of the human mind to 
put constructions on language suiting it to 
its own preconceived ideas or preferences. 
You are obliged to acknowledge that, in 
spite of all differences and all obscurities, 
there is a body of well-ascertained and gen- 
erally received religious doctrine taught 
in the Bible. It is so received by a vast 
majority of those who have been in sym- 
pathy with the spirit of the Revelation, 
who have sought its real signification with 
docility, and have made a cheerful obe- 
dience % to its practical requirements one 
of the guiding lights to its interpretation. 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 9 

Drawing an obvious distinction between 
those things in the subject-matter which 
are essential to its life, as well as essential 
to constitute a Christian in belief and 
character, and certain other things con- 
tained which are not so essential — a dis- 
tinction clearly made out within the 
Revelation itself — you acknowledge that 
there is as good an agreement respecting 
the former as could be reasonably ex- 
pected, considering the nature of religion 
as a spiritual reality, and considering the 
imperfection of words as a medium of 
communication. Moreover, you are aware 
that in certain great, ancient, and power- 
ful Christian organizations, claiming to 
have a common origin and a common 
interior life — claiming to be able to dem- 
onstrate an unbroken historical existence 
from the beginning, with invariable marks 
of identification, and therefore pronounced 
branches of one Church, there has come 
down, from the earliest Christian age, 
a Declaration or summary, in two con- 
cordant shapes, of these vei;y facts and 



10 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

doctrines — -the essential matter of the 
Faith : the Creed of the Apostles. 

Again you observe an inseparable con- 
nection between the prevalence of this 
Faith and the welfare of our Race. In all 
human history since Christ came, civiliza- 
tion and Christianity are found together. 
The first never exists in its highest form 
without the second. The second never 
exerts its peculiar power freely, without 
producing the first. There were forms of 
society before Christ came, and outside of 
Judea, where the intellectual arts reached 
a rare measure of cultivation. So we 
sometimes speak of a Phoenician or a 
Greek civilization. But the term is rel- 
ative. No other civilization deserves a 
moment's comparison with the Christian. 
As soon as Christianity prevailed any- 
where, a new and higher social type was 
manifested. No ideal of human excel- 
lence has transcended the Christian stand- 
ard. No heroism has been more glorious, 
no kind of moral dignity more majestic, 
no domestic virtue more chaste, no mer- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 11 

cantile honor more immaculate, than the 
Christian ethics demand. It has every- 
where been put beyond cavil by experi- 
ment, that mankind are every way better 
for the Gospel. 

Go where you will and make up a 
catalogue of those attributes or qualities 
which belong to the higher social state, 
you discover, on comparison, that they 
are the very same which are emphatically 
enjoined in the New Testament, and that 
they actually appear in the world in pro- 
portion as the entire Christian morality, 
propagated and supported by the ordi- 
nances of the Gospel, penetrates the 
private life and controls the public action 
of the people. You are not blind to the 
logical inferences from this recognized 
law, or to the immense confirmation it 
lends to the claims of Revelation. 

This, then, is your attitude. Intel- 
lectually you are a Christian ; because 
nothing in your intellect, on the whole, 
denies the religion of Christ. Negatively 
you are a Christian ; your adherence to 



12 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

this religion, if it can be called such, 
consists rather in not denying, than in pos- 
itively embracing and asserting it. Pas- 
sively and nominally you are a Chris- 
tian ; because, while belonging to a nation 
or community called Christian, you offer 
no conscious or intentional opposition to 
this religion : though you neither avow 
personal allegiance to it, nor make any 
resolute endeavor to promote or establish 
it. You are not an infidel, or even a 
skeptic. You are not an atheist, because 
you believe in God. You are not a pan- 
theist, because you believe God to be a 
person. You are not a rationalist, be- 
cause, when you reflect, you acknowledge 
an authority in Religion above your own 
or any human reason. If you reckon your- 
self in with any eccelesiastical or denomi- 
national body it is still only speculatively 
that you belong to it, because your prefer- 
ence leads to no practical result, and tastes 
are not convictions. 

You may hang loosely upon a religious 
society, but are not joined vitally to any. 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 13 

You are not quite certain, I think, whether 
you were brought by the faith of others, 
as a child, into a covenant relation with 
the Body of Christ, in the Sacrament of 
Baptism, or not ; you are not concerned 
about that ; if you were so brought to 
baptism, you have taken no heed of the 
relation, and have done nothing to prove 
yourself a " very member incorporate " 
in the Body. 

Owing to some instincts that you have 
never taken the trouble to account for, or 
some traditional notions that render the 
Christian name respectable, you would re- , 
sent it as a wrong, possibly as an affront, 
if you should be refused that name, Chris- 
tian. But you do not pretend that the 
amount of your title to it is more than I 
have represented. 

I have taken pains to mark out your 
position in these respects somewhat more 
fully than you have done it in the few 
intimations you have given me, with a 
particular object. It is important to any 
right use of what is to follow that we note 



14 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

with equal care what you receive, or con- 
cede, of the system of Divine Truth, and 
what you do not. I am especially desir- 
ous to have it understood that your diffi- 
culties are not those of an absolute un- 
believer. 

Let no reader of these papers suppose 
that what has here been said, inciden- 
tally, of the proofs of Revelation, is in- 
tended as a formal answer to those that 
deny its truth. I have only alluded to 
two or three lines of the manifold argu- 
ment. It is sadly true that the class of 
doubters is large, nor is it difficult to 
detect the causes of its recent increase. 
Many of these skeptics are but very 
superficially acquainted with the real 
grounds of the Christian belief. The 
neglect of Christian history, in our sys- 
tems of education, has long been amazing. 
We are beginning to see that it is disas- 
trous. 

What is needed as much, perhaps, as 
anything for the arrest of speculative un- 
belief, is an appreciation of our Religion in 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 15 

its historical character. That is, Chris- 
tianity is a matter of fact. A notion 
extensively prevails that it is entirely or 
chiefly a matter of opinions, sentiments, 
feelings, interior states, or else of abstract 
principles. The vast importance of all 
these in relation to practical results and 
personal conduct is not to be overlooked. 
The end of Christianity is character ; the 
production in man of that likeness to 
Christ which is the supreme manifesta- 
tion on the earth of the glory of God. 
There the divine and human elements 
meet in their intended reconciliation ; 
the Incarnation becomes a perpetual re- 
deeming power ; with the second Adam 
is a new creation. But there is a popular 
confusion of ideas as respects two closely 
related and yet actually different things; 
namely, the Christianity of personal char- 
acter on the one hand, and, on the other, 
Christianity as a tangible reality outside of 
our personality, a whole body of facts or- 
ganically wrought together and ascertained 
as any other facts are ascertained, an ob- 



16 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

jective, solid substance, an institution of 
God, a visible and definable thing that He 
has given to men and set up on the earth. 
We can look at it, study it, identify it ; 
it must be accounted for, for there it is. 
If we think we can account for it without 
Revelation, or in any other way than that 
which Revelation opens, why, we can try 
it. Some men have tried ; with what 
success you know. But if we put all this 
body of historical facts out of view, and 
undertake to conceive of Christianity as 
wholly a matter of internal states, or in- 
dividual ideas, it is obvious that there can 
be no certainty, no definiteness, no fixed- 
ness, no standard or criterion, about it. 
Some will agree about it, and some will 
differ. Logically there may be as many 
Christianities as there are individuals. 
All those internal states, dispositions, 
principles, that make up a Christ-like 
character, are the fruit of that revealed, 
embodied Christianity of facts, opening out 
from God, containing a law of authority 
and a life-giving energy, originating in 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 17 

Jesus Christ born of Mary, " the Word 
made flesh," and disclosed in divine 
beauty through Him to the eyes and 
hearts of mankind. Around his person, and 
stretching down the ages from the track 
He trod and the cross where He died, is 
a broad and luminous belt of kindred, 
clearly attested verities, further facts, 
but al£ of them parts of one Whole. 
Were our religion to be approached more 
generally under this representation, it is 
probable that multitudes would take a 
new kind of interest in it, that many 
loose and fluctuating notions respecting it 
would be replaced by a settled confidence, 
and that to these multitudes the expres- 
sions " Kingdom of Heaven " and " Church 
of God " would take on a new significa- 
tion. Errors of opinion would be found 
to have been thrust into association with 
these facts by mortal hands ; but they 
would also be found to be separable, be- 
cause the tests of facts, including the origi- 
nal Records, the historical events, and the 
visible institutions are so much simpler 
2 



18 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

and more satisfactory than the tests of 
mere speculation. 

There are three classes of unbelievers : 
1. Unbelievers who are so from a natural 
slowness and hardness to believe ; consti- 
tutional doubters, congenital Thomases, — 
who have taken little trouble to be rid 
of their defect, and so suffer a contin- 
ual loss of faith and peace. 2.* Unbe- 
lievers from other men's misrepresenta- 
tions of the Faith, from false education, 
from the sincere blunders of mistaken 
theologians, and from the bad lives and 
small graces of avowed but inconsistent 
believers. 3. Unbelievers from taste and 
choice, from the conceit of being sharper 
and wiser than the ages, from an ambi- 
tion to sit in the pride of individual judg- 
ment on Bible, Church, and all other 
authority, — unbelievers having in them 
the spirit and temper of doubt and a 
relish of denial. You are not, I assume, 
to be reckoned in with either of these 
classes. Yet your position is not so far 
removed from the skeptic's, or so secure 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 19 

against sliding into it, as to make it un- 
suitable for me to remind you that for 
every one of these sorts of skepticism there 
are remedies, ready for use. ^ Be assured, 
that for a thorough defense of the Faith 
against each and all of the various forms 
of unbelief, ancient or modern — and the 
modern are not so very unlike the ancient 
as you may have been led to imagine — 
the Church, in her scholarship and her 
dialectics, feels entirely armed. Not all 
her champions are thus armed. There 
are honest contestants among them who 
know but little of the enemy's real 
positions, little of the real strength of 
their own cause ; who have never had oc- 
casion for the terrible encounter in their 
own souls, and have not studied pro- 
foundly the laws of the warfare elsewhere. 
Understand, however, that to the skeptic 
the Church has something to say about 
skepticism. I have been acquainted with 
a great many doubters, and I am obliged 
in truth to say but very few of them, con- 
tinuing doubters, have been willing to un- 



20 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

dertake to satisfy their minds by what I 
should call a fair and reasonable amount of 
careful reading, of the right kind, on the 
Christian side. There would be little 
difficulty in naming two or three affirma- 
tive works in Christian literature on each 
department of modern unbelief* which 
would be acknowleged in any court of 
Letters to deserve the highest intellectual 
respect ; and they are such works that 
till they or their equivalents have been 
read, no man has an intellectual or moral 
right to determine in favor of disbelief. 
It would be well if, instead of jumping 
to the conclusion that their doubts are 
insoluble, minds that are tending to un- 
belief would apply to some competent 
authority for information. At present we 
are on a different field. 

Nor is the class of minds small to which 
you, my dear friend, belong. You will 
readily perceive that, though I am ad- 
dressing myself to an individual inquirer, 
and would gladly do as much if you were 
all alone in your difficulties, vet I cannot 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 21 

be unmindful that there is scarcely a con- 
gregation or hamlet in the land where 
scores of men and women are not to be 
found who, if they were as candid as you 
are, would confess to the same religious 
dissatisfaction. In fact, I suppose that it 
is precisely these difficulties which at this 
moment create one of the most formida- 
ble obstacles to the spiritual power of 
Christ's Church and Gospel. Praise be 
to God that here and there a frank, 
thoughtful mind is moved to own the 
first, faintest movements of the Spirit, 
and seek the way of life ! You may be 
sure you will not be chided or discouraged 
by any true follower of that Christ, our 
only Saviour, who treated with wonder- 
ful love every sincere seeker of his friend- 
ship. I promise you as tender a sympa- 
thy in your troubles as one burdened, 
tempted heart can feel for another. 
Above all, do not forget that however 
cordially and earnestly we may strive to 
help one another, our first and final help 
is in God alone, and that simple, direct, 



22 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

special prayer to Him is the surest path 
to the light. 

What, then, in a word, is your com- 
plaint ? You are not, on your own show- 
ing, a true disciple of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, in will, in heart, in life. Some- 
thing is wanting at the very root. You 
are conscious of it. Let us start at that 
point, then, where the Spirit of God has 
brought you. 



LETTER II. 

THE WANT. — ORIGIN OF THE FEELING. 

My dear Friend : In our conscious- 
ness, a Christian life begins in a sense of 
want. We must be dissatisfied with 
what we have, and with ourselves as we 
are, before we shall go in search of a bet- 
ter part, or aspire to a loftier estate. 
The Saviour appeals first to a feeling of 
the need of being saved. Self-content- 
ment, if such a degree of stupidity can 
be said to exist at all in a moral nature, 
is the most discouraging of conditions. 
There is no power of spiritual quickening 
in it. Neither the sensibilities nor the 
activities of life are born of death ; and 
to be absolutely self-approved is to be 
dead. If we say that we have no sin, we 
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in 
us ; and the absence of truth from the 



24 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

spiritual world is what the obscuration of 
light is to the physical. If you thought 
yourself well enough off as you are, you 
would not have sought for more light ; 
and it would be hard work to feel much 
esteem for your manhood. You should be 
thankful that you are in some measure 
unhappy. 

I remind you, observe, of what takes 
place in the consciousness of man. About 
the processes of the Divine Spirit there is 
a deeper mystery. We know, however, 
by his own plain declarations, that lie 
moves upon the heart according to the 
heart's own spiritual constitution, in con- 
formity with its laws, and in the ways of 
an everlasting order. Not only has He 
had a personal concern for you, separat- # 
ing you, in the gentle thoughts of his 
loving-kindness, from all other souls that 
ever lived, ever since you were born, but 
the preparations of his grace were made 
for you before you began to be. The 
Lord " loved us before we loved Him." 
St. Paul struck down among those pro- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 25 

founder things where *>ur modern medita- 
tions seldom drop their plummet, when he 
said, " According as He hath chosen us in 
Him before the foundation of the world." 
Concurrently with the course of our nat- 
ural, ordinary existence, the purpose of 
this heavenly affection has been patiently 
wording. It has been ever pressing to- 
wards us, seeking tenderly to attract us 
to Himself, and to fashion us into his 
likeness, taking advantage of every turn 
in the stream oL life, besetting us be- 
hind and before, " following," and " pre- 
venting," marvelously turning ordinary 
events, little and great, into instruments 
of this definite design, and often coming 
upon us in providences so signal, in their 
evident intention to make us understand 
his meaning, that, in our imperfect dis- 
cernment of the whole plan, we call them 
" special." Run your eye back along 
your past years, and candidly tell your- 
self whether you cannot see traces of such 
an assiduous goodness, a " besetting God." 
It will be strange if you do not then in- 



26 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

quire of yourself what this signifies, and 
what you owe for it. Whether you do or 
not, the Grace works on, as it has from the 
first, infinite, unwearied, trying to fashion 
the poor frivolous thing, that you call your 
life, into the glory that is possible for it. 
One of Christ's most earnest efforts has 
been to stir up in you the sense of need 
which you are now willing to confess. 
The Spirit works within us not only " to 
do" but u to will," and to feel that un- 
less we do so " will " we die. 

Searching closely, we find that this 
grace has an outward as well as an in- 
ward economy. Operating immediately 
on the soul, it operates also mediately 
through the fixed channels, the conduct- 
ing ordinances, the life-conveying sacra- 
ments of a mediatorial system. St. Au- 
gustine and others call them " life-giving " 
sacraments ; and so they are ; but we must 
take care not to hide the original Giver, 
or confound even the stream of living 
water with the hand of Love that pours 
it. All the parts of this gracious system 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 27 

are organically related to one another, 
being fitly joined together, compacted 
and articulated, each member nourished 
and the whole body continually enlarging 
by that which every joint supplieth. Je- 
sus Christ is the head of this complete, 
twofold, living organization. His incar- 
nation is at once the source and the type 
of the entire constitution, every depart- 
ment and organ of it being constructed 
on the pattern and warrant of the Heav- 
only Life and Grace taking a visible form 
in " the Word made Flesh." You can- 
not afford to despise the office of these 
mediate agents, in both awakening and 
filling your spiritual wants. Their sanc- 
tion is in the mediatorship of the Son of 
God, — God's unseen life becoming visi- 
ble and tangible, in order to impart itself 
to an indifferent world. Your attention 
may not have been much directed to them 
in this higher character ; for between a 
false spiritualistic philosophy on the one 
hand, and an engrossing materialism on 
the other, their Divine appointment has 



28 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

been well-nigh forgotten, and accordingly 
much of our piety has become ghost-like, 
and our living carnal. But as you come 
to regard them in this pure evangelic 
light, as the first Christians did, they will 
put on an inexpressible beauty. You 
will see that God has dealt with us in the 
simplest way, on the most natural terms, 
taking us body and spirit, just as we are, 
and not proposing to put asunder in relig- 
ion what He has joined together every- 
where else. He reaches the unseen 
springs of penitence and prayer by a 
pathway not entirely invisible to sense. 
No matter how jealous you may be of at- 
tributing too much efficacy to external 
forms, you must acknowledge that nearly 
all those impressions that you consider as 
coming directly from the Spirit into the 
heart, are found, after all, to be borne in 
by some outward vehicle, or instrumen- 
tality - — a written text, a word spoken, 
a sight seen, a sorrow overtaking, an 
event occurring. Besides, among impres- 
sions that are wholly without regulation, 



STEPS- TO A LIVING FAITH. 29 

or law, or criterion, you know that a great 
many run to extravagance, fanaticism, 
self-conceit, and religious absurdity. Jf 
I am not mistaken, you have sometimes 
laid off the responsibility of your own 
indifference upon the disgust and reaction 
occasioned by that sort of sentimentalism. 
"There is one Spirit and one Body." 
You will discover here a very merciful 
adaptation to our practical necessities. 
That of itself will invest the subject with 
fresh interest, I think, and will perhaps 
wake up a new desire to go further, and 
will help you to feel that St. Paul was 
right in calling the Christian discipleship 
a " reasonable service." Indeed, you will 
begin to wonder, I suspect, that you have 
not sooner recognized this twofold work- 
ing of the Spirit in all parts of the Bible^ 
as well as in the history of the Church. 

I have referred particularly to it here 
on account of its connection with the 
sense of want, which is the beginning of 
conscious Christianity in the squI. You 
find the want making itself felt. But 



30 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH, 

does it make itself felt ? There was no 
such motive force there. You did not call 
it into being. It came. You felt it. It 
was present by no act of your will. 
Whence was it ? Suppose you were 
brought, in the obedience of faith, in 
childhood, into the sacramental covenant 
of baptism, then this waking up of a de- 
sire after your true inheritance, this feel- 
ing after God — if haply you may find 
Him — is a part of the fulfillment of his 
baptismal promise, which He was " sure 
to keep and perform." The germ is 
springing after all. Seeds sprout that 
have been lying buried long. It was not 
an empty form. The water was not in 
vain, because the Spirit, and a pledge of 
the Spirit, and a sponsorial faith and 
prayer, were with it. How could it be in 
vain ? Whatever you may desire to do 
with this awakened want, be sure it is a 
part of your Father's faithfulness to you, 
and will take its place as a witness for 
his affection. If you were not brought 
into the Body sacramentally, then you 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 81 

have only to be thankful for a yet more 
abundant grace. Your Lord has done 
more than He promised. The river has 
overflowed its banks to reach your lips. 
Beyond what you have had reason to ex- 
pect or claim, not being under the cove- 
nant, you are visited and touched by the 
boundless Compassion that would not 
leave even the Gentile without some wit- 
ness. You have still to say, - 

" 'Tis mercy all that thou hast brought 
My mind to seek her peace in thee." 

The connection, however, even then, 
between this gracious experience in your 
religious history and the initiatory sacra- 
ment is not, by any means, dissolved, as 
we shall see. What in the one case came 
after, in the other comes before. As the 
salvation before Christ came was still 
Christian salvation, so all the movements 
of the Spirit of the Saviour on the heart 
bear a secret relation to the revealed 
kingdom and its laws. As will appear, 
Christian grace is not complete till you 
are a branch on the Vine, a member in 



32 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

the Body. You cannot too firmly believe 
that all the spiritual influences and pow- 
ers which play through our human life 
emanate from the person of Christ, and 
that all spiritual help for us centres there. 
The Comforter testifies of Him. It will 
assist you greatly if you can join with this 
faith a hearty conviction that the only 
religious progress you can hope to make 
will not be independent of the worship, 
the ordinances, the rites, the visible order 
of the Kingdom. 

At any rate, recognize in yourself, first 
of all, this feeling of something wanting, 
this restless sense of need. However it 
came, however you may think it came, 
by whatever untraceable course it found 
its way, take it very humbly and grate- 
fully as a gift of your God. Do not 
despise it because it is feeble. Do not 
distrust it because it is not constant, 
or not constantly remembered. You do 
not know what boundless blessings may 
come in its train. Treat it rightly, and 
it may be the germ of infinite gain, of a 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 33 

harvest of vigorous virtues. Reverence 
your self -discontent. Taking you just as 
you are, it is the healthiest symptom of 
your soul : the finest thing in you. You 
are not satisfied with yourself, religiously, 
as a man, living in Christendom. Act 
accordingly and acknowledge it. <No man- 
lier thing have you ever done. Kneel 
down, like a child, like a man, at once, and 
thank God that you have done it. A 
vague dissatisfaction, a disturbed feeling 
of being generally wrong, of being out of 
the best way, is not the same thing with 
a sense of the need of God. Many men 
know that they want something, and 
something quite different from all that 
they have or are seeking, but do not 
know what they want. And yet these 
two states are meant to be links in one 
chain. There is a step between them — 
a step that too many never take ; for it is 
sadly true that there is no spot along the 
whole line, from the swine-herd of the far 
country to the Father's house, where 
some weak feet have not halted. The 
Spirit has done his first salutary work 



34 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

when He has made us uneasy in ourselves 
and uneasy with the world. What trage- 
dies, and famines, and slaughters, might 
have been escaped, if restless multitudes, 
feeling the pain, had not from pride, or 
eagerness of appetite, or fatal delay, at- 
tempted to bury it or narcotize it, instead 
of listening to it ! What it requires is an 
interpreter of its solemn voice, and a read- 
iness to follow it as the prophet of a better 
future. Many a soul that finally came to 
cry out for the living God, as the hart 
panteth after the water brooks, could only 
say at first that it was " athirst." The 
benediction of the beatitude falls, to be 
sure, only on those who hunger and thirst 
after righteousness ; and it is worth your 
notice that all the blessings pronounced 
before that one, are promised to simply 
receptive states, emptied of self, — pov- 
erty of spirit, sorrow, humility. Yet 
those hearts are not far from the blessing 
which have found out that the world's 
cisterns are broken. Our next step will 
be to look more closely at the nature of 
this want. 



LETTER III. 
THE NATURE OF THE WANT. 

My dear Friend : A sense of spirit- 
ual need being the beginning of spiritual 
action, and necessary to both repentance 
and faith, the stirring up of that sense be- 
comes, as we have seen, the first effort of 
Divine Love in the soul. Here are the 
model and rule for human ministrations. 
In dealing with ourselves, or with one 
another, if we aim at deep work, or 
thorough results, we must go bravely 
and honestly at this mark. Preeminently 
it is the prophet's business. Men in ear- 
nest will not shrink from the awful office 
— stern, searching, incisive, painful, and 
therefore very often unwelcome, but mer- 
ciful with the far-sighted mercy which re- 
gards the true peace beyond the transient 
pain. You notice it in all those parents, 



36 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

disciplinarians, spiritual masters and pas 
tors, who know the difference between 
affection and fondness, between kindness 
and indulgence. The great workmen for 
God have wrought straightforward in the 
mystery of this higher faith and charity, 
willing to hurt when they were sure 
thereby to bless. The preachers of grand 
est success, in all periods, have been those 
that had most skill and power in making 
their hearers uncomfortable in the knowl- 
edge of themselves, and discontented 
with their past lives. Hence the terrible 
severity of those rebukes, in Holy Scrip- 
ture, that fall on messengers who deliver 
to the people the message the people wish 
and are delighted, in their low-toned life, 
to hear, instead of the message given them 
when they were sent. Smooth prophesy- 
ings are lying prophesyings. When apa- 
thy is the disease, and drowsiness the 
symptom, soft sayings are the hardest in 
their cruelty. Not that the sense of want 
is kindled always in one style, or always 
in direct terms, or by always technically 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 37 

talking to men as impenitent sinners. 
Pulpits that have made this their only- 
way are responsible for a miserable mass 
of callous consciences. But be the method 
what it will, the first object is the same 
— the creation of a conscious hunger. 
Some by hearing the plainest invective, 
some by an acute analysis of the interior 
morbid condition, some by the uncovering 
of their delusions, some by the wholesome 
stimulation of the better powers till they 
put the worse to shame, some by being 
made to look at lofty standards and pure 
ideals in contrast with their meanness and 
selfishness, yet all alike must come to 
feel and confess that they are empty till 
the Lord's hand fills them. They are the 
strong and happy souls which take the 
truth of God on these rugged terms, not 
counting the truth-teller their enemy, not 
impatient of faithfully-reproving lips, not 
shrinking from the humiliating discovery 
that they are Laodiceans, poor, and blind, 
and naked. It is nothing less than ever- 
lasting life, my friend, that you want. 



38 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

You can afford some wretchedness and 
homesickness for that. Be encouraged 
that you have found out enough of what 
you lack to put you out of ease, starting 
in you a quarrel with your indifference. 
You say that you have too little sense of 
sin. No doubt you have. But how did 
you happen to say it ? Unless you are 
utterly insincere, as I do not believe you 
are, your very saying of that is a sign of 
hope, a token that a new life is generated 
and quickened, a faint ray of morning 
light on the cloud in the East. 

When our Lord, in his personal min- 
istry, came to an indifferent world, he 
sought primarily to convict it of just this 
defect, to make it conscious of its indiffer- 
ence. From the Record we learn the 
wondrous fact that, to a large extent, He 
did this as no other teacher ever did, by 
simply showing himself, in the Divine 
tenderness of his benignity and the 
beauty of his holiness, to the eyes of 
men. His mere presence, by the marvel- 
ous power which absolute goodness exerts 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 39 

over evil, smote the persons He met with 
a kind of self-condemnation. They looked 
upon Him, and a strange self -revelation 
flashed through their natures. Instantly, 
and as it were in spite of themselves, they 
stood in new relations to themselves, to 
their fellow-men, to God, and to judgment, 
because He was there. They can throw 
off this silent grasp upon their consciences 
only by going away and plunging back 
into the old superficial life. A thorough- 
bred Pharisee was equal to that policy. 
A few, of simpler habits, men of more 
open spirit, women whose tears were not 
all burnt out of their fountains, looked 
into the Heavenly face, listened to the 
Heavenly voice, and knew that they 
needed Him. For awhile this seems to 
have been all that they knew. It drew 
them to Him. As they went on it bound 
them to Him. They said to themselves, 
" This stranger can give me all I want." 
They were not instructed yet. There was 
no explanation. The august opening of 
the mysteries of the Gospel of the King- 



40 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

dom was not yet begun, by one parable, 
beatitude, miracle, or prediction. Men 
were made disciples by another evangeli- 
zation, by a secret waking up of self-con- 
tempt and self-renunciation, by the heart's 
hunger, and a sufficing assurance that He 
would, fill it. The latter part of the first 
chapter of St. John's Gospel illustrates 
this, in the details of such a following of 
a new-comer as never was before or since. 
John the Baptist had said a few half- 
understood words of the Nazarene as a 
Lamb of God, to take away sin: an im- 
perfect preaching of the Cross. But He 
in whom the power and glory of the 
Cross lay was there. That was enough. 
He said, " Come ; " and men came. It 
was an easy matter to throw away fishing- 
nets, boats, a tax-gatherer's table, and to 
leave houses, and livelihood, and every- 
thing held most precious to that hour. 
The feeling of want arose in its mighty 
mastery, because He in whom " all the 
fullness dwelt bodily " stood manifest. 
When He went on to teach and preach, 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 41 

it was only a more articulate expression 
of the same influence. He took up the 
Baptist's cry " Repent," a word of kin- 
dred import to the " Turn ye " of the 
older prophets. By the well of Samaria 
the guilty woman had her hidden thirst 
interpreted to her under the image of the 
well-water. Any sudden disclosure of 
his Divinity evidently had the same pen- 
etrating and convicting effect as his lan- 
guage. At a merciful miracle which, we 
might have thought, would only have 
made the witnesses complacently thank- 
ful, St. Peter exclaimed, " I am a sinful 
man," — not good enough for this Pres- 
ence, — " Depart from me ; " and when 
the same apostle, a primate of penitence 
though not of prerogative, afterward took 
up his missionary calling and preached 
the first and pattern sermon at Pente- 
cost, the burden of it was, " Behold your 
Saviour, whom you have crucified, and 
let the sight of Him make you repent, 
drive you to your baptismal washing, and 
through faith to life." In the personal 



42 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

revelation of Jesus, all that was bad in 
men became visibly and confessedly bad ; 
yet this conviction became not a force of 
despair, but rather an inspiration of hope ; 
because at the same moment all capaci- 
ties of good sprang into confident vigor 
under his eye, and along with the feeling 
of spiritual need there came, in Him, the 
infinite and inexhaustible and free supply, 
— " the Lord our Righteousness." 

Proceeding now to analyze this general 
sense of spiritual need, you find it has 
several elements. In actual experience, 
these may make themselves felt in dif- 
ferent individuals with different degrees 
of power ; one of them may sting this 
heart, and another that ; but they all be- 
long to the beginnings of the conscious 
life of God in the soul. 

1. First is the want of being at one 
with God. I doubt if a single soul, when 
the faintest rudiments of Gospel truth 
have once been presented, can be found 
wholly devoid of a feeling of uneasiness so 
long as it is alien from God, and because 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 43 

of that alienation. All that is necessary 
to it is a belief that there is a God. Once 
let that idea enter and lodge itself in your 
mind — and with most men it enters by 
a door that no mortal hand opened — and 
ever afterward a shadow of fear pursues 
you till you know that you and God are 
friends with one another. The shadow 
may be slight, fugitive, making scarcely 
a deeper impression than the shade of a 
thin, white cloud on the mountain side 
across which it flies in the flood of noon. 
But it comes and comes again, and again, 
and always there is some questioning, 
some misgiving, some little check of the 
blood, or shrinking of joy. Give it a 
voice, a chance to speak, and it would 
say, " All is not right between me and 
God." Peace is disturbed. There is a 
twinge of pain. This God is almighty : 
then it cannot be safe to be estranged 
from Him. He made the world and us . 
Can it be well for us to live on as if thei^ 
were no such Being ? He is the Judg^; 
What is his judgment of me ? He is lov** v 



44 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

What does it mean that I have no love 
for Him ? His love holds me in on every 
side : What must come of it, if I go on 
just shutting my eyes to it, and trying to 
forget it ? Unquestionably there are ex- 
pedients enough to help you in that mad 
forgetting. The world is a curiosity-shop 
brimful of them ; the flesh promptly fur- 
nishes them through five avenues ; the 
devil makes it his obliging business to 
pass them on in their most fascinating 
shapes and colors. But what of ail this ? 
Your soul's divine instinct is mightier than 
all of them. Your soul aches under its 
alienation. It cannot rest till it looks up 
with clear eyes, and is sure that it is on 
the side of God — that between itself and 
God there is no separation. 

2. Attending this want of oneness 
with the Heavenly Father, and so near 
to it, as practically to be a part of it, 
is the want of a special reconciliation. 
There is a secret feeling that all this rest- 
less sense of alienation and boding fear 
may be gone, and become a thing of the 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 45 

past, remembered only as an ugly dream. 
Call it an intuition, or an operation of the 
Spirit that strives with man, or a convic- 
tion let in upon you at some time by the 
Word of Life, no matter now what your 
account of it is. You reckon yourself a 
"believer." I am not anxious to inquire 
the amount of your belief. It is enough 
to keep alive in you, or else to press back 
often upon you, a conviction that there is 
such a thing as an act of Reconciliation, 
definite and effectual, and that it carries 
an estranged soul over at once into that 
blessed state of friendship and peace. 
You have heard of it as known by' ex- 
perience to thousands in the Church. 
You believe in it, as possible for you. A 
conscious need of being " at one " with 
God would be only a tantalizing torment, 
unless there were a reality of at-one-ment 
answering to it. The one want passes 
into the other. You need not puzzle 
yourself about the process. Bible and 
Church say but little about processes ; 
they deal with facts. The fact with you 



46 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

is, that you want to have that miserable, 
haunting, guilty sense of absence from 
God, replaced by a real restoration to 
Him. The fact in the everlasting mercy 
of God towards the whole world, which 
precisely meets that want in you is, that 
He is in Christ, reconciling the world to 
Himself. A little positive and resolute 
faith in you will bring the want and sup- 
ply together. 

3. An obstacle to this reconciliation 
arises in the recollection of your past 
disobedience and present unworthiness. 
Granted that oneness with God would 
bring you peace, and that there is a way 
to it in the reconciliation of the Saviour, 
there has been a direct, personal, life-long 
affront on your part toward God, in all 
this evasion, faithlessness, and selfishness. 
You know enough of the relations be- 
tween one person and another to under- 
stand that there must be a direct personal 
forgiveness of you by a personal God, 
before there can be open relations, or a 
taste of strength and gladness. Hence, 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 47 

a part of the want is a want of pardon 
and of an assurance of absolution. The 
old score of accumulated transgression 
must be blotted out. One gracious stroke 
of forgiving Love must cut away the 
clog dragging at your feet. One word of 
power must make you whole, and turn 
your fear to trust. You want to be cer- 
tain that for Christ's sake, God hath for- 
given not only mankind at large but you. 
You want the Cross, and you want the 
comforting voice of the Church, the Body 
of the Lord, reiterating to you not only 
the promise that you shall he but the 
affirmation that you are forgiven and ab- 
solved, in that you believe and are washed 
and made a branch on the Vine. 

4. But, in addition to these cravings 
which are subjective, having relation to 
internal states and satisfactions, you want 
the satisfaction of a right and definite 
position among your fellow-men, founded 
on these right relations with God, ex- 
pressing them, openly declaring them. I 
think this is an almost universal desire, as 



48 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

soon as any religious life springs up, for- 
cible no doubt in proportion to the natu- 
ral honesty and constitutional straightfor- 
wardness of the person. There is a great 
significance in it. We are not mere in- 
dividuals. We are bound in with a social 
and corporate life by bonds and links and 
ties of marvelous delicacy and mysteri- 
ous meaning. These ties involve our 
spiritual faculties and responsibilities. 
Neither our Christian life here nor our 
final salvation can be a merely individual 
concern. There is a Body of many 
members. Hence a true Christian must 
be a Christian before men, among men, 
in their face and sight. For their sake 
and his own he must be enrolled, and in 
a communion. No concealment, or am- 
biguity, or misconstruction, as to his place 
and belongings, can be tolerated. He is 
no true soldier who hides his colors, or 
thinks to fight out of line. In this world 
belonging to God, and with two armies 
occupying it, and no strip of neutral terri- 
tory anywhere between them, can you 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 49 

possibly treat your Maker loyally or fil- 
ially without taking sides ? It is a part 
of truth to stand aright, as well as to 
think and feel aright. Are you not con- 
scious of this, and a little uneasy at your 
fictitious neutrality ? Is not this a part 
of your want ? 

5. I apprehend that the more you re- 
flect on the matter the more you will feel 
yourself in the wrong as having either 
believed too much or done too little. 
This, if you will let me say so, is a con- 
spicuous weakness in the whole class of 
men to which you belong. You lack, 
and will not deny that you lack, consist- 
ency. As a " believer "it is impossible 
for you, with solid respect for yourself, or 
with a perfectly frank countenance before 
the world, to stay " indifferent." Belief 
in spiritual verities is of the nature of a 
law constraining the will, kindling the 
conscience, impelling the active powers. 
Belief in God the Father binds you to 
filial obedience ; in the Son, to a confes- 
sion and discipleship ; in the Holy Spirit, 
4 



50 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

to a consecrated life — a life of prayer 
and advancing holiness ; in Revelation, 
to a practical performance of the plain 
requirements of the Book ; in the Church, 
to an explicit, acknowledged membership 
and a grateful reception of both of its 
healing sacraments. There is no stop- 
ping-place midway. Speaking well of 
Christianity as a civilizer, paying a 
parish-tax, helping to build a church, 
supporting or entertaining a clergyman, 
attending public worship, do not at all 
meet the demands of consistency in the 
case. Neglecting the most vital and most 
characteristic obligations of Christ's re- 
ligion, and yet admitting its truths, you 
put yourself in an attitude that you find 
it utterly out of the question to defend, 
or even to attempt to defend. Were you 
to see a man, in any other department 
of life, going so far, in conviction and 
action, in expenditure and painstaking, as 
to provide a complete apparatus for some 
special operation, and then stopping short 
of the decisive and ultimate benefit all 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 51 

along contemplated, you would apply to 
him names harsher than you would be 
ready to hear applied to yourself, even by 
those who, disinterestedly, watch for your 
soul. 'Are you sure 'that you would be as 
patient with him as Christ's ambassadors 
are with you ? I think I have talked 
with hundreds of men occupying — I 
cannot say holding — the ground you oc- 
cupy, and though I have endeavored, in 
every way, to draw out an intelligent defi- 
nition and vindication of the position, I 
have never yet, in a single instance, suc- 
ceeded in seeing it undertaken. It is not ' 
for me, my dear friend, to impugn your 
candor and honor by presuming you do 
not really want to be out of that unmanly 
compromise, on a firmer footing. Might 
not the thorough-going soldier, faithful in 
the field and faithful at the feast, say to 
you, " Your rock is not as our Rock, even 
ye yourselves being judges ? " 

6. There is a future. A cry not to be 
suppressed in your own better nature, 
and the solemn prophecy ringing all 



52 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

through that Word of Heaven in Holy 
Scripture, which you say you believe, 
proclaim it with almost equal distinctness. 
Every human heart wants something very 
definite in order to confront " that Day." 
I shall say nothing to you about the pro- 
portions of the figurative and the literal 
in the predictions ; for you know as well 
as I do that the eternal reality is not to 
be trifled with or covered up by any such 
imbecile devices. The Day will try every 
man's work, every man's foot-hold, of 
what sort it is. There must be some- 
thing to hold by. A " belief " will not 
do it, if it is a belief too short to reach 
from the intellect to the heart and will. 
A doctrinal theory, a pew in church, 
an outward conformity, handsome words 
about your ecclesiastical order spiced 
with sarcasms on the ways of your neigh- 
bors, along with a life intensely absorbed 
in your business, your family, your repu- 
tation, will not answer. There mil shine 
at last a great and scorching Light, be- 
fore which the secrets ei all hearts will 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 53 

be opened. There can be no illusion 
about the Right hand and the Left. 
Forewarnings of that separation are writ- 
ten all over your common scenery. The 
stream sweeps on. Familiar forms vanish. 
The graves open and close. Your body 
shows symptoms of wearing out. What- 
ever the changes may be, is there not " one 
thing " that is a preparation for them all, 
and makes a man superior to them all ? 
Do you not want that ?. Does your pres- 
ent religious condition give it to you ? 

7. Suppose, finally, that as a reason- 
ably thinking and honestly acting man, 
you have admitted these wants in you, 
dealt fairly by them, and followed their 
sacred leading, instead of hiding, stifling, 
or running away from them. The better 
life, born of the renewing spirit, with 
your consenting will, has begun. Still 
there is one want more. This secret, 
Divine life is in a human vessel and 
wants food, — a heavenly nourishment 
that it may grow thereby. Growth is its 
law, and if it is not fed it cannot grow ; 



54 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

it cannot else but die. My friend, need 
I say to you that a life which only the 
Spirit of Christ can create or awaken, 
only Christ Himself can sustain ? that it 
is by his own hand, from his own heart, 
in his own banqueting-house, at his own 
board, that .the immortal refection and 
refreshment must be given ? When 
it is farthest from home, the longing, 
famishing heart sees, half in penitential 
memory, and half in the expectation of 
faith, the " Bread enough and to spare." 
What comes of that vision ? 



LETTER IV. 
THE CHOICE. 

My dear Friend : It has appeared 
that the first movements of spiritual life 
in an indifferent soul arise from the stir- 
ring of an inward sense of dissatisfaction. 
The diversified forms under which this 
feeling asserts itself in different persons, 
or in the same person at different times, 
show the extent and depth of the disorder, 
as well as the manifold mercy of that 
ever-soliciting Spirit who is so unwilling 
to leave us to ourselves. There is no more 
affecting view of our human life than 
that which presents it to us as a scene 
of this perpetual working of Divine com- 
passion, seeking by every possible agency 
and avenue to enter in and rouse us from 
apathy, to break the sinful sleep, to open 
our eyes on the beauty of holiness in the 



#56 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

face of Christ, to unseal our ears that they 
may hear the voices of a higher world 
than this, and to draw us into the bless- 
edness of reconciliation and communion 
with our Lord. The air we breathe is all 
quick with these gracious ministries. Till 
we find it out we discern only the surface, 
we comprehend nothing of the glory, of 
the common life we are living. It is but 
a tread-mill march, or a mere scramble 
of appetites, or a whirl of vulgar intoxi- 
cations, or a mocking dance of illusions. 
Strong words are used by Holy Scripture 
to declare the earnest reality of this Di- 
vine solicitation, so much more merciful 
to us than we are to ourselves. The 
Spirit strives with man. He pleads, He 
presses, He teaches, He watches, He pur- 
sues, He cries, He wrestles, He agonizes, 
He maketh intercession with groanings 
that cannot be uttered. What kind of a 
nature must it be that can stay indiffer- 
ent to a Love like that ? 

In most cases, under this solemn deal- 
ing with us, there is no stopping of the 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 57 

stricken soul to resolve the distress into 
its elements. One keen, overmastering 
conviction of being wrong, mean, guilty, 
and in helpless danger takes a tremendous 
possession of the man. It is like a spe- 
cial instinct provided for the mind now 
awaking to the everlasting realities in 
which it is entangled. That soul is in 
its utmost peril ; o'f what precise evils or 
pains it is in peril, it does not undertake 
to inquire ; it is in no mood for analyzing 
its alarm : it only knows that all conceiv- 
able evils are round about it, and threat- 
ening it, because it is away from God. 
" Lost" is the Scripture word, not a whit 
too vigorous for those who know anything 
about it. Hence the question, the New 
Testament tells us, that comes to the lips 
of a man convicted of this one supreme 
want — this sense of inward separation 
from God flashing through him — whether 
his outward living has been respectable or 
dissolute — is the question of instant dan- 
ger — " What shall I do to be saved? " 
With the degree of vividness or intensity 



58 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

in the conviction, as with the manner of 
demonstrating it, no doubt temperament, 
or other personal qualities, will have some- 
thing to do. I only beg you to mark two 
things. One is that you are never to 
make any other man's experience, espe- 
cially as to its emotional characteristics, a 
model or a measure for your own ; incal- 
culable mischief has been done, discour- 
aging effort and depressing hope, by this 
unhealthy comparison of the mere phe- 
nomena of faith in its individual manifes- 
tations. The other is, that the experience 
itself — that stage of the inner- progress 
where the soul feels and confesses its com- 
plete helplessness, insufficiency, emptiness, 
and knows itself to be lost without God, 
is an essential reality, with every soul that 
ever passes from unbelief or indifference 
to the power and peace of a union, by 
faith, with Jesus Christ. The study of 
subjective religion discovers it as a logical 
necessity, while all Christian biography 
reveals it as a spiritual fact. I need not 
inform you that in the Revelation which 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 59 

you believe, from one end of the Bible to 
the other, no doctrine is clearer or more 
conspicuous. 

At this point comes a decision. It is not 
enough to say that it ought to come ; it 
must come. Strictly speaking it is super- 
fluous to exhort the man to decide whether 
he will be God's true child and servant or 
not ; whether he will serve God or him- 
self, Christ or this world, the Holy Spirit 
or Satan. He makes that decision inevi- 
tably. I may urge him to make it on the 
right grounds, to make it fairly and intel- 
ligently, to make it for his eternal life, 
and to declare it honestly when he makes 
it. But make it he must. There are only 
two possible attitudes in which you or any 
man can stand toward God in Christ: one 
is that of union, the other of opposition ; 
one is that of willing, conscious, faithful, 
affectionate obedience, the other is that of 
distrust, separation, alienation. Not to 
be in the first is to be in the last. Neu- 
trality is utterly out of the question, be- 
cause it is incompatible with the nature of 



60 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

tlie moral and personal relations subsist- 
ing. Towards a man you may hold a re- 
lation of indifference or moral neutrality, 
because the personalities are finite, and 
the spheres distinct. The two simply let 
one another alone. But God is every- 
where. He creates, encompasses, pre- 
serves, commands, loves, redeems us. By 
no possibility can we escape these intense 
and intimate ties, holding us to Him. No 
energy, no will, no disbelief, no sacrilege, 
no oblivion, can set us free from the re- 
sponsibility of choice. The will of the 
one or the other person, yourself or God, 
is obeyed. " He that is not with me is 
against me." The particular value of 
that state to which you have come, when 
your empty soul hungers and thirsts after 
God, conscious of the estrangement, is 
that it breaks up the illusory and treach- 
erous pretense of such neutrality, teaches 
you that indifference means disloyalty, 
and moves you powerfully to choose 
aright. 

If we seek the causes of this division 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 61 

of the life of the moral world, and this 
absolute necessity of being on one side or 
the other, we shall find them in the fact 
that the Lord of all souls is one God, the 
discriminating law of his single Will ar- 
raying all souls in two armies, either as 
being in harmony with that Will, or in 
discord with it ; and again, on the other 
part, in the freedom of man. With these 
conditions, the more you think of it, the 
plainer it will become to you that to pre- 
sume upon indifference as a kind of mid- 
dle-ground of temporary security where 
you are waiting for a convenient time to 
make up your mind, or for some wrench 
in your life to take you off your feet and 
sweep you into the Kingdom of Heaven 
involuntarily, is something a gi;eat deal 
worse than folly. There is not a word in 
the Book of Life that lends any color to 
a sophistry like that. Mix ourselves up 
as we may, let the gradations in the ap- 
pearances and outer details of character 
be what they will, the line runs out 
straight from the Great White Throne, 



62 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

and you and I and all souls are on the 
right hand of it, or on the left. 

This act of choice is distinct in its na- 
ture, direct in its operation, generally 
instantaneous, and yet is in no respect 
inconsistent with the laws of the rational 
constitution. You decide whether or not 
you will be Christ's man, in the same 
way, by the same sort of mental action, 
that you decide what profession you will 
follow, or in what country you will live. 
Put promptly away all those artificial 
representations that would envelop the 
matter in a maze of mystical confusion, or 
take it out of the range of simple, intelli- 
gible, reasonable doings. There are mys- 
teries in religion, but not in this region of 
it. There are things of faith that are spir- 
itually discerned, but this act is not one 
of them. Let there be no necromancy 
and no fanaticism beclouding the sharp 
question whether you will be a thorough- 
going, unequivocal disciple. Long trains 
of thought may very well go before the 
actual determination. The mind may 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 63 

advance and recede, waver and deliberate, 
weigh reasons, or be swayed by passion ; 
but finally there is a moment when the 
great controversy is settled, the face is 
turned, the foot is planted, the will de- 
clares, " I will arise." Th§ heart gives 
itself at once to the Lord, and thenceforth 
is more truly self-possessed, better bal- 
anced, and resting in a deeper peace, than 
ever before. 

In one respect this decision is unlike 
all others, and stands alone. It compre- 
hends the whole field of character. It is 
not one of a class or series of decisions. 
By placing you on the right side of the 
great line, it determines that on that side 
also a great many of your less-considered 
actions, indeed the main body of your 
actions, shall lie. Every-day life includes 
thousands of deeds which scarcely seem to 
have any definite moral complexion, be- 
cause no specific moral motive is conscious- 
ly connected with them. This Christian 
choice throws all these over into the sphere 
of dutiful obedience, because it assigns 



64 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

the man himself to a dutiful position, on 
God's side, with godly motives. The old 
sacramental writers used to distinguish 
three of their seven sacraments as " giving 
character," and as " character" is indeli- 
ble these were never to be repeated, name- 
ly, Baptism, Confirmation, and Orders. 
We may adopt the expression for that in- 
ward act of choice on which Confirmation 
sets the seal. If it is genuine, and intelli- 
gent as Church teaching can make it, it is 
very rarely, to say the least, in the normal 
progress of the spiritual man, to be done 
a second time. Once for all the younger 
son says, " I will arise and go to my 
Father." After that, the ups and downs 
of the homeward journey over the moun- 
tains are not very hard to bear. 

You have too much good sense, I trust, 
to raise the cavil of human inability, and 
to excuse yourself from choosing, on the 
pretext that your business is to wait for 
the sovereign energy of God. No doubt, 
if you desire to put a metaphysical puzzle 
into your business of laying hold on Eter- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 65 

nal Life, this one will serve your turn as 
conveniently as any other. Precedents 
for that sort of self-stultification are not 
wanting. The older school of Calvinistic 
orthodoxy stood fast for sovereign grace 
in conversion ; but that system went far 
to sacrifice the grace to the sovereignty, 
limiting the Divine benevolence by the 
arbitrariness of the personal election. 
Pressed by this difficulty, the later and 
more liberal school ventured to escape it 
by saying that " the first step is man's ; " 
rationalizing more than they were aware, 
and opening a wide door to Pelagianism. 
Catholic doctrine has always seen the clear 
workings of Heavenly grace antecedent to 
any human choice, forever besieging the 
heart with the inward and outward solic- 
itings of the Spirit, and making man's 
part to consist in a simple ceasing to 
resist, and an opening of the door to Him 
who stands and knocks. The prodigal 
" came to himself," and "arose;" but 
the power of the love and bounty in 
the Father's house was upon him long 



66 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

before. You may arrange one class of 
texts attributing the whole spiritual work 
in the human soul to the absolute, uncon- 
ditional action of the mind of God ; and 
over against these you may set another 
class equally explicit, requiring all that 
work of the free will of man. But an 
unsophisticated, candid believer makes no 
question at all that these diverse represen- 
tations are only two hemispheres of the 
perfect globe of truth — two parts of a 
consistent whole. After we have made 
the most of the difficulties, we are still 
able to reach a practical solution, and rest 
in it. We knoiv that God is Almighty, 
and the fountain of every good thing 
within and about us. We know just as 
well, that whensoever we will, we may 
give Him our hearts, and be sure that He 
accepts them. We know that we can de- 
cide, choose, turn ; and that when we 
have so done, it was yet God that wrought 
within us to will and to do, far more than 
we wrought for ourselves. This is enough. 
It is sometimes represented, in religious 



STEPS TO A* LIVING FAITH. 67 

discourse, that in making the great choice, 
we choose between two conditions equally 
separate from us, and external to us. 
The impression is that the kingdom of 
Christ is as foreign to each individual as 
the kingdom of anti-Christ ; the chooser 
stands apart from both, surveys them ab 
extra, and, on a cool comparison of their 
advantages, takes which he prefers. There 
is a misconception here of the economy of 
the Gospel, of the grace of God, of the 
Divine plan of the Church, and hence of 
the entire practical method of the Chris- 
tian life, a misconception which is wide 
spread among modern religionists, and is 
disastrous in its effects. According to the 
Apostolic teaching, every baptized person 
is already within the Kingdom. Divine 
mercy and the faith of the Church placed 
him there. The shelter of the Covenant 
is over him. The defenses of the eternal 
Fold are round about him. His choice, 
therefore, is not between going here and 
going there. It is between staying and 
being true and faithful where he already 



68 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

is — true to the blessed place and faithful 
to its holy obligations — and renouncing 
his inheritance for exile. Shall he be a 
filial child in that house — a loyal citizen 
of that Kingdom — a sound and serving 
member of the Body, under the life-giving 
Head — or shall he sink into the double 
guilt and deepened shame of refusing an 
invitation and disowning a birthright? 
Even if you were not made a partaker in 
that sacramental blessing, you still sus- 
tain a certain relation to Jesus Christ, the 
Lord of our race. 

It is not optional with you, my friend, 
whether you shall live on a redeemed 
earth, and in times on which the ends of 
the age are come ; it is only optional with 
you hoiv you shall live here. It cannot 
be with you as - if your Saviour had not 
sanctified the world with his feet, and 
sweetened its air with his charity, and 
judged it by his cross. These supernat- 
ural facts are a part of the estate you 
occupy. Neither your ingratitude nor 
your caprice can root them out, or clear 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 69 

you of the accountability they bind upon 
you. Your indifference may blind your 
eyes or paralyze your limbs ; it does not 
slide you out of the range of the media- 
torial ministry, or of the reckoning that 
must follow it. In any case, therefore, 
the scales of the choice do not hang evenly 
balanced. Your right decision is already 
weighted with the coming of the Son of 
Man. The Way of Life has his light 
upon it. Choose you, this day, whether 
you will serve, in joy, the Master of the 
house, or turn your back upon it, and 
upon Him ! If you have wandered some 
distance away, turn you, for your place 
is kept for you, and you are yet within 
the borders of the King's country ! If 
you have fallen into the slumber of uncon- 
cern, awake and arise, and Christ shall 
give you light ! 

Set clear of the perversions and discol- 
orations of mistaken systems, the teach- 
ing is wonderfully simple and wonderfully 
consistent. This signal, solitary, personal 
act of choice, by the catholic and evan- 



70 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

gelic instruction, has its due place and 
proportion in the entire history of the 
new life — no more, no less. With the 
baptized it looks backward to the im- 
planted grace and quickening life of the 
regeneration, and owns its seal, deriving 
thence secret power and the consolation 
of an inviolable promise — a help so sure 
that even Luther declares that all subse- 
quent resolves and renewings must be 
traced back to Christian baptism, as they 
start from that. With the unbaptized it 
is incomplete and incongruous until the 
choosing soul takes its pledge, and wins 
its benediction, at the same cleansing font. 
Nor, on the other hand, are the relations 
of this grand decision to Christian nurture 
and growth and a gradual sanctification 
afterward, less definite. The choice de- 
termines the direction of the soul's move- 
ment, strikes away all obstructions to the 
impelling power of the Spirit, and places 
the disciple where he will receive all the 
holy helps and gracious nourishments pro- 
vided by the Lord's hand. Inwardly, a 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 71 

decisive change lias come to the negligent 
and careless heart, which makes all things 
new; and the salvation, once for all ob- 
tained, is appropriated. It is an act of 
faith, for faith is the willingness to receive 
that life which Christ gives. The confes- 
sion now is, " My Lord, and my God, I 
am thy child, thine always henceforth, 
thine to be fashioned and led, thine to 
love and serve ! " 

There remains a spiritual discipline 
under a law of spiritual increase. 



LETTER V. 

DISCIPLINE OF THE NEW LIFE. 

My dear Fmend : Magnifying, as we 
ought, the importance of a definite decis- 
ion of the great question, we are not to 
take it for more than it really is. There 
is a danger at either extreme. Here is 
one multitude missing the inestimable 
benefit by irresolution as to the act of 
laying hold of it ; there is another wasting 
or losing it by taking the one act of choice 
for the whole work of life, leaning idly 
back on that single purpose of the mind, 
and behaving as if by being on the right 
side of the line we were released from the 
drill and the march, the vigil and the bat- 
tle. How mournfully this twofold for- 
feiture reduces the ranks and limits the 
triumphs of the Lord's kingdom among 
men ! What an unfathomable depth of 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 73 

sadness there is in that most pathetic say- 
ing of his, " Ye will not come to me that 
ye might have life ! " And yet while He 
marveled at the utter unbelief of some, 
He evidently looked with equal sorrow on 
the frail resolves and short-lived emotions 
of others, whose zeal was as fugitive as 
the morning cloud, and their penitence and 
piety as quick to vanish as the drops of 
morning dew ; the workmen that looked 
back as soon as their hands had touched 
the plough, or the disciples that had no 
root in themselves, and so endured but 
for a time. 

You may say, perhaps, that this relapse 
into indifference does not always come 
from moral infirmity, but that it often 
results from mere spiritual ignorance, or 
a lack of clear and firm directions as to 
how the resolved and started Christian 
should go on ; and you might say this 
with reason. Mistaken instruction must 
answer for a fearful amount of efferves- 
cent religion. Sometimes the whole ob- 
ject of religious exhortation seems to be 



74 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

to kindle up and set aglow a furnace of 
pious feeling without the least suggestion 
as to what is to be done with the heat af- 
ter the flames are lighted. Sometimes a 
stress so exclusive is laid on the determi- 
nation to begin the work that, after the 
beginning has been made, and the good 
part has been chosen, the beginner is ut- 
terly at loss what to do next. The first 
step has been taken, thanks be to God ! 
But are there no other steps ? A position 
has been gained. What then ? What 
for ? Beyond this first act a nebulous 
confusion envelops the scene. The move- 
ment slackens. A sense of disappoint- 
ment creeps into the heart, and with dis- 
appointment the reaction that almost 
always attends a relaxing of an over- 
wrought tension of the mental or emotion- 
al powers. Doubts are gendered. Spirits 
not of heaven are ready to crowd into the 
empty room. The world, never resting, 
never sleeping, never wanting in definite 
promises, presses hard. Old habits and 
passions, " scotched, not killed," reassert 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 75 

their insinuating or imperious demands. 
The Hill Difficulty looks rather steep : is 
the end worth the troublesome toil, after 
all ? This second state of indifference is 
as bad as the first. 

But meantime, my friend, the everlast- 
ing verities have not changed their places 
or lost their light. They are stars that 
never set or go out, whatever low-bred 
mists may hang about our eyes. Your 
Father is waiting for you ; Jesus Christ 
is the same ; the Holy Spirit still strives ; 
the deep wants of your soul are not 
quenched ; the Covenant is not dissolved ; 
the House stands with the door open and 
the table spread, and all the gracious nur- 
ture of the Home is prepared ; provisions 
are made there, not for a fickle sentiment, 
but for an immortal progress. No errors 
or failures of human teaching can alter in 
.the least these abiding realities. 

Suppose, then, the new life of personal 
faith and holy endeavor has been awak- 
ened and begun. Its next need is nurture. 
If it is not to perish, it must have care, 



76 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

protection, nourishment, guidance. It 
must be treated just as all other young 
life is treated. There must be a com- 
plete sj^stem of training adapted to its 
nature, meeting all its weaknesses, expos- 
ures, and necessities, and ministering to it 
all that it requires, in a patient discipline 
for a final perfection. Of course this ju- 
venile religious life is not able to strike 
out such a system for itself. It has not 
wisdom, strength, or experience for that. 
At best it is in a mortal vessel. The 
child never makes his school : if he could 
do that he would be beyond the school 
already. The question arises, — and it is 
one of unspeakable interest, — Is there 
any such positive system of spiritual nur- 
ture existing ? Is there a place, and 
method, and form of that Divine train- 
ing ? Is there a school whose authority 
and love are both complete and complete- 
ly harmonized ? Is there a home for the 
Father's child, and a tuition for the Mas- 
ter's disciple ? Must there not be ? And 
if there is, you will say, with me, that 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 77 

Heaven, and not man, must have estab- 
lished it. He only who made the soul, 
who called it to glory and immortality, 
and awakened it to conscious life, must 
have created and fashioned the plan of its 
education and provided for its maturing. 
Your own thought will anticipate what 
I would say, and give the only true name 
to the fact. It must be the Kingdom of 
Heaven on the earth ; the Church of God 
in Christ ; the Family of the Bridegroom 
and the Bride. 

There, beyond all peradventure, the 
young life in your heart must be shel- 
tered, and have its nutriment ministered 
by a higher hand than your own. There 
it must be glad and thankful to be, hum- 
ble, teachable, diligent, obedient. If it 
already finds itself there by the covenant 
of Churchly faith enclosing you in bap- 
tism, in your childhood, it is well ; it is 
better than you know, in many ways ; for 
no understanding ever entirely compre- 
hends the grace of the Sacramental mys- 
tery, any more than the other hidden 



78 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

mercies of the Spirit, breathing where 
He listeth. Blessed are those children! 
Even then, however, — since you were 
unconscious, perhaps, and irresponsible, 
when those Arms wrapped their embrace 
of compassion about you, — you will in- 
quire whether there is not some free, vol- 
untary action on your own part needful 
to ratify and confirm, by personal self- 
consecration, the sponsorial vow and the 
charitable work of others in your behalf. 
The answer, if you look into your New 
Testament, will not be far to seek, — 
Revelation here, as everywhere, answer- 
ing to reason while over shining and di- 
recting it. Baptized or not, having now 
chosen to take up your inheritance and 
follow your Lord, you have an immediate, 
imperative duty to discharge ; and you 
see what it is. In the one case it is to 
"arise and be baptized;" in the other, 
it is to seek the laying on of hands, which 
is the voluntary consummation of the bap- 
tismal blessing, with the further gifts of 
the Holy Spirit attached and pledged to 
that effecting ordinance. 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 79 

Notice that in the very doing of this 
commanded act there is a supply of addi- 
tional poiver. We are so made that the 
moment we are filled with a new feeling 
and a new purpose, there is requisite — 
wherever a healthy, natural condition al- 
lows it — some overt step to be taken. 
Some energy must be put forth, to con- 
centrate the subjective life and fix it as 
an abiding power of " character." The 
earnest, ardent convert, and the more de- 
liberate and guarded believer alike, com- 
ing to this stage of the true experience, 
naturally want to do something ; to move 
forward ; to arise and walk ; to stand up 
for Jesus ; to bear a testimony ; to take 
an oath of allegiance and service, — the 
original sense of the Latin sacrarnentum. 
If nothing of this sort is undertaken, 
there is the usual danger of a passive, 
ebbing, disheartened sensibility. The 
newly-chosen walk with God becomes 
secure and vigorous by an outward con- 
fession and enrolment. Instead of sub- 
siding into himself, inspecting his own 



80 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

interior anatomy, and brooding over his 
dubious symptoms, the new man takes 
healthily up his proper business, and goes 
gladly on. He goes first where his Chris- 
tian purpose will be taught for work, and 
fed for growth. In the practical aspect 
of this kind of proceeding you will be apt 
to find yourself intelligently interested, 
and your indifference giving way. 

Sentimentalists, in abundance, imagin- 
ing they are advocating a superior spirit- 
uality, will tell you to beware of the 
whole outward part of religion as a mat- 
ter of surface and snare ; that, despising 
these visible conformities and supports, 
you are to struggle up independently and 
individually, if you can, through some 
exercises of unregulated feeling and some 
groping among abstract principles, into a 
rarer atmosphere, or, if it might be, into 
a closer likeness to Christ. But you will 
have to meditate the matter only a little 
while to perceive the fallacy. In the 
whole range of our knowledge, in any 
of the kingdoms of nature, we know of 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 81 

no life that does not inhabit a form and 
act through organs. Take the form or 
body, without the informing life, and you 
have, to be sure, only dead wood fit to be 
burned or a corpse fit to be buried. But 
take the life, if you can, without the body, 
and you have only sap spilt upon the 
ground, or a fitting ghost, spectral and eva- 
sive. All vital force needs some channel or 
shape to conserve it and give it instrumen- 
tal value and regularity of operation. As 
sure as converted individuals go about to 
find their own ways of religious progress, 
there will be chaos instead of order, and 
apples of ashes instead of fruits of right- 
eousness. There will be as many religions 
as there are people, and, after a time, not 
much of Christ in any of them. At any 
rate, the word of the Law puts the matter 
out of dispute. Our mortal fancy may be 
fertile in comparisons and " modern in- 
stances." But the command to mind the 
outward part is just as plain in Scripture 
as to mind the inward part. The same 
Lord who says " Repent," says also, "Be 



82 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

baptized." The Saviour, who sanctifies by 
the Spirit, institutes a sacrament of sanc- 
tiflcation in the Supper. Inspiration (Heb. 
vi.) places " the laying on of hands " side 
by side with " faith toward God," among 
essential " principles." The Gospel 
speaks no more explicitly of virtues and 
graces than it does of " the kingdom." 
Great care is taken, too, to pronounce the 
visible part to be of universal obligation, 
binding on " all " and " every one." 
Doubtless there is a gradation in these 
things ; in a sense, one is more important 
than the other. But where Divine teach- 
ings are explicit, and precepts are of ab- 
solute authority, it is not for us to omit 
anything, or call anything superfluous, or 
optional. 

If you have a notion that you can 
attain to any heights without doing ex- 
actly what God has told you to do, with- 
out entering by a visible door — putting 
your spiritual life to school and to practice 
in an instituted Church, to be nourished 
there just according to her divinely-ap- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 83 

pointed appliances and helps, in prayer, 
sanctuaries, separate seasons, sacred places, 
reverent observances, charitable works and 
ministries, holy sacraments — it is only 
because you have been more or less misled 
by a very plausible sophistry of self-direc- 
tion, or infallible personal illumination. 
A great deal of the prevailing indifference 
— not all of it, but much — may be traced 
to the misleading of that flattering idea. 
The sooner you make a fair revision of 
the whole subject, and let good sound 
common-sense and a docile heart set you 
down at the feet of the Great Master, in 
his own " school," the sooner you will be 
a strong soul, at peace with yourself, and 
a useful workman for God. 

You will observe, further, how practi- 
cable and hence how animating the busi- 
ness of being a Christian becomes, by 
the orderliness and definiteness of it. 
Nothing is more fatal to good intentions 
than vagueness. We not only gain noth- 
ing by beating the air, but we disappoint 
and disgust ourselves. Our Lord gives 



84 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

us our work in successive steps, one thing 
at a time. The steps may follow rapidly- 
one after the other, but no one of them 
can be skipped. If you leave out the con- 
fession of Christ, and the taking of your 
place in his Heavenly School, there will be 
a defect or failure as to all that shall come 
after that. I may wish myself on the top 
of the mountain on the other side of the 
river. Shall I sit here wishing, or shall I 
step into the boat that lies yonder ready 
to take me across ? Shall I build a dream 
of reaching that point per saltum, or shall 
I climb, putting one foot before another, 
in the mountain path ? Shall I cavil be- 
cause the boat is not a balloon, or because 
it is made of common, visible wood ? God 
proves us first by the humility of a par- 
ticular obedience. Christ required of those 
He healed that they should do something. 
The act of taking up the responsibilities 
of an open relation to the Church is es- 
sentially an act of faith, and hence, with 
the sacrifice it demands, it is a test of the 
sincerity of faith. You cannot expect 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 85 

the satisfactions of the Father's house, 
and the " bread enough," even though you 
are' within the borders of the King's coun- 
try, till, all unworthy, you draw near and 
come under that roof. 

Several familiar objections arise to this 
outward act of holy obedience, whereby 
you seal your choice and achieve the two- 
fold benefit of bearing testimony to your 
Redeemer and receiving the nurture and 
discipline of his household. 

1. There is an objection on the score of 
belief. Men hesitate because they are 
not sure that they believe enough. Some 
men are constitutionally slower to believe 
than others. Men that are Thomases by 
temperament are to be treated with re- 
spectful sympathy, and when so treated 
they may become, as the gospel shows 
us, mighty and valiant in faith. The 
things necessary to be believed are, there- 
fore, reduced in Christ's Church to the 
smallest possible number and the simplest 
possible terms. It cannot be God's inten- 
tion, after planting his Kingdom on earth 



86 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

by the costly sacrifices of redemption, to 
keep men out of it by intellectual difficul- 
ties. Having died for you, Christ will 
not tax you by demanding an assent to a 
string of metaphysical propositions such 
as only one man in a hundred can grasp. 
He asks you to believe in Him, a living, 
Divine Saviour, and in the personal and 
historical facts of his Mediation, with a 
very few of the more comprehensive 
truths closely related to his person, his 
ministry, and its consequences. This 
summary is the daily Declaration of the 
Church, in all her members, to herself, to 
the world, and to God. About that there 
is not to be a shadow of uncertainty. 
Whatever is beyond that is doctrine not 
essential to membership, or to beginning, 
but may be learned in the discipline, and 
by doing the will, afterward. 

2. Other objectors plead a defect of 
feeling. There is, of course, such a de- 
fect. But you will remember that neither 
the Bible nor the Church has laid down 
any gauge of the precise amount of re- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 87 

ligious emotion necessary for being a 
branch on the Vine, and that our emo- 
tional nature is one of the most change- 
able and indeterminate elements in us, 
being largely influenced by temperament, 
by passing occasions, by physical states, 
by natural and unnatural stimulants. One 
of the prime absurdities of untaught 
teachers is to be perpetually telling their 
hearers to feel more about religion, when 
the more they try to directly force them- 
selves to feel, the less the right feeling 
comes. The fact is, in all the great acts 
of life we have to subordinate mere feel- 
ing to conviction, impulse to principle, 
lively sensibilities to a law of right, and, 
provided we have just feeling enough to 
begin a commanded work honestly, we 
are to make the beginning. Put yourself 
directly where God has told you you 
ought to be, and then you will be in a 
position where the touching and inspiring 
objects which naturally rouse devout emo- 
tions will exert their power. Instead of 
waiting to feel more before you act at all, 



88 STEPS TO A LIYING FAITH. 

bestir yourself to act as you are, and 
your indifferent heart will be like coals 
of dulled fire under a rising wind. You 
lament that you feel too little hatred of 
sin and too little love of God. Shall I so 
mock and insult you as to assure you that 
you feel enough, or that you may put your 
sluggish spirit at ease ? God' forbid ! I 
only bid you in the name and after the 
teaching of the Saviour, to take some 
humble courage to come nearer to Him, 
and to let the fact that you have feeling 
enough to own your want of feeling, drive 
you to the promises, and so save you from 
despair. 

3. If this is Christ's word to hearts of 
defective sensibility, He speaks very much 
the same word to those that excuse them- 
selves for fear that their general religious 
attainments are too little. Little enough 
they are, with the best of us. How are 
they to be made larger ? By ourselves, 
or by our Lord? If by Him, how but 
by his own appointed way, in his own 
appointed place ? The question is not 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 89 

how much of a Christian you are, but 
whether you are earnestly desirous and 
deliberately resolved to be a Christian at 
all. If so, then you must be, as soon 
as possible, where and where only the 
blessed and glorious result can be gained. 
Starving, you must creep to the table ; 
freezing, you must approach the fire ; 
ashamed of your ignorance, you must sue 
for admission to the school. Proper re- 
spect must be paid to any timid appre- 
hension that the honor of the Body of 
Christ will suffer damage from an incon- 
sistent member : but that must not blind 
us to the other dishonor of holding back 
from Him a confession that is his due. 
We are not to chide the modesty which 
dreads to make a vow that may possibly 
be broken ; but neither are we to conceal 
the assurance that to those who go straight 
forward strength and support shall be 
given, of which they know nothing who 
have not made the venture and the trial 
of faith ; nor are we to call that self -dis- 
trust which is really distrust of God. We 



90 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

may recognize some moral integrity in a 
diffidence that shrinks from the responsi- 
bility of a public commital ; but why not 
consider whether there is not a responsi- 
bility quite as awful in leaving undone 
what the Almighty has ordered us to do, 
especially when He declares that if we do 
not confess Christ before men Christ will 
not confess us before the Father ? 

I do not expect of you such a frivolous 
pretext as that you do not call Christ 
Master because you have seen so many 
men call him Master, and then go back to 
live mean, selfish, unclean, unjust lives in 
the world. Pride and self-approval fre- 
quently have as much to do with that 
excuse as any scruple of conscience ; nor 
would the treachery or backsliding of all 
the world change by a hair's breadth the 
relations and duties of your single soul to 
God now or in the last judgment. 

You are not paltry enough, I am sure, 
to refuse your allegiance to Christ, once 
seeing it to be due, because it will cost 
you a denial of some pleasures and van- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 91 

ities of the senses and a crucifixion of 
some of the fierce ambitions of the mind. 
Indifference is not cowardice. And even 
if you look no higher than the personal 
satisfactions to be obtained, it must have 
occurred to you that you will find more 
than a recompense for any sacrifice of 
earthly delight in the honorable liberty 
and joy of a clean and unambiguous stand 
on the side and under the banner of Him 
in whom you " believe." 

Look the objections fairly in the face. 
Having met tl^em and dealt with them in 
detail, consider whether they are fit to 
stand between you and the future growth 
of your spiritual life in the nurture and 
discipline of the Fold of Christ, who has 
so loved you as to give Himself for you. 
Once within that Fold, and close to Him, 
it will appear that there is the place of 
holy work as well as of refreshing rest, of 
giving as well as of receiving, of service 
for man as well as of praise and prayer 
to God, of the nobleness of charity no 
less than of the cheerfulness of hope and 



92 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

the peace of faith. It remains, therefore, 
in one letter more, to mark the course of 
the growing Christian's increase in holi- 
ness toward the measure of the stature of 
the perfect man. 



LETTER VI. 

THE LAW OE SPIRITUAL INCREASE. 

My dear Friend : The Christian life 
would be a more attractive thing if the 
lives of Christians were less dull. We 
are all impressed by signal manifestations 
of vital power ; and the higher the kind 
of power, the deeper and grander the 
impression. I suppose one prolific source 
of religious indifference is that those who 
appear to the world as representatives of 
religion have but a meagre and timid ap- 
prehension of the principle of perpetual 
growth inherent in the Christian faith. It 
is not that they are insincere, in belief or 
feeling, but that they take the Christian 
privilege for a much less glorious thing 
than it is, and misconceive its mightiest 
law. They exhibit it as negative, when 
it really is positive ; as attained and com- 



94 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

passed by a single experience of conver- 
sion, whereas that is only the outset of an 
unceasing progress ; and as a condition 
of stationary security instead of a con- 
stant production of holy uses and mani- 
fold forms of good. " Herein is my 
Father glorified, that ye bear much 
fruit ; " and if the Father is thus glorified, 
so also his cause, his kingdom, and his 
personal service. Were the Church as 
alive in its membership as it is in its liv- 
ing Head, — were it a body of thorough- 
ly roused, intensely earnest, forward- 
pressing men — men on whom the signet 
of their consecrated calling were visibly 
stamped, men having their conversation, 
in a true sense, in heaven, and all the 
more serviceable in this world because al- 
ways acting as having a commission and 
an errand for the other, never counting 
themselves to have apprehended, but al- 
ways reaching on, : — then who could cal- 
culate the energy of its movement? 
Would it not irresistibly sweep into its 
majestic lines multitudes now uncon- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 95 

cerned ? This engaging and inspiring 
influence on unbelievers of a spiritual life 
ever cumulative and ever advancing might 
well be presented oftener than it is as a 
practical argument for greater Christian 
activity, and as a motive for missionary 
zeal. Indifference begets indifference, — 
yielding after its kind. I will give you 
the credit of presuming that possibly your 
own lack of interest may be partly owing 
to a prevalent but depressing idea that the 
act of accepting Christ's invitation and 
putting on his badge exhausts the stress 
of his demands, and as good as finishes 
the business of becoming a Christian. 

The error inflicts, in fact, a double 
damage. On the one hand, with some 
minds, it creates a sense of unreality, re- 
pelling rather than animating any gener- 
ous aspiration. In other quarters, it pro- 
duces a wrong estimate of the require- 
ments for taking a clear Christian position, 
in the good confession of baptism and 
confirmation, and discourages from that 
duty. If a single step — silently reasons 



96 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

the perplexed and diffident inquirer — 
is so all-inclusive in its moral magnitude, 
if it is not only the first essential thing, 
chief in significance and chief in its chal- 
lenge to courage, but so exhaustive in its 
character as to fill the field of vision and 
leave very little to be done afterward for 
the full keeping of Christ's commands, 
why, then there must be some extraordi- 
nary prerequisite ; there must be certain 
singular, abnormal, interior exercises : 
sincere sorrow for sin and faith in the 
Lord and his cross cannot be enough. I 
might be ready to make a beginning, but 
I cannot make an end at the same mo- 
ment ; I find conversion is pushed out of 
the rank of practicable undertakings ; I 
must wait a great while before I commit 
myself to a profession like that. On that 
theory it will not be strange if misgivings 
and excuses without should make many 
empty places within ; if the company of 
those who dare to come and sit a;s learners 
and followers at the Saviour's feet should 
be very select indeed ; and if the princi- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 97 

pal employment of- the venturesome few 
should consist in self-congratulation at 
having escaped the things behind, rather 
than in the self -forgetful and loyal doing 
of a work for Christ, lying at hand and 
stretching before. Never present to your- 
self the act of conversion, I beg you, as 
a leap out of the field of action, or a re- 
lease from the necessity of exertion, but 
exactly the contrary. We are not awak- 
ened to lie down, or confirmed to stand 
still. Accustom yourself to regard this 
great change in a more stimulating light. 
Take it as just getting into a position to 
receive ever-renewed gifts from God, and 
to do nobler labors for Him. Look at it 
as an equipment for a service of charity 
and prayers yet scarcely begun ; the clear- 
ing up of confused relations with eternity ; 
the joyous acceptance of a heritage where 
the blessedness will lie in boundless op- 
portunities of disinterested work, with 
love for the motive*, and endless supplies 
of strength from the Beloved for the re- 
ward, and the communion of pure souls, 

7 



98 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

ever ascending into loftier holiness, be- 
cause ever " growing up in all things into 
Him," for the refreshment. Will "in- 
difference " to a calling, a career, a des- 
tiny, like that be possible ? 

You can be troubled by no serious 
doubt that this is the real nature of the 
Christian life, as to its beginning and its 
course, when you turn from the one-sided 
schemes of scholastic and sentimental 
system-makers to the strong Scriptures of 
truth. To quote their solid array of ex- 
plicit and literal statements, standing all 
along the pages of the New Testament, 
affirming the law of spiritual increase and 
spiritual fruitage, and binding it upon 
each disciple, would but very imperfectly 
exhibit the strength of the doctrine. It 
is incorporated into the whole evangelic 
structure, it is inwoven into the texture 
of the New Economy, in its implications, 
allusions, personal biographies, sacramen- 
tal significations, and all its practical 
helps. Beginning and progress, birth 
and growth, believing and living, are 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 99 

never for an instant confounded with each 
other. The steps never interfere. The 
order is never disturbed. " As ye have, 
therefore, received Christ Jesus the Lord, 
so walk ye in Him," might be taken as 
the solemn superscription of every epistle. 
In all places where they are planted, the 
young Churches are addressed as being 
made up of persons in whom a certain 
movement of Divine life has been begun, 
but not matured, with a great deal yet to 
do, and a great deal to undo : graces to 
be gained, and faults to be fought down ; 
knowledge to be patiently acquired, and 
active force to be indefinitely enlarged ; 
Christians to be fed, that they may grow 
— ministered to, that they may be built 
up — " called to be saints," indeed, be- 
cause they believe, and because their re- 
lationships and aims are holy, but with 
a saintship inchoate, as it were ; sure in 
its root, magnificent in its anticipations, 
and yet beholding the greater glory to 
be revealed only through a perspective 
of greater self-denials to be borne, and 



100 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

greater toils to be accomplished. We see 
the same law continually recognized in the 
Saviour's recurring references to the anal- 
ogy of the seed, the plant, and the corn, 
and in the exalted standard of unattained 
righteousness that He always keeps flying 
like a celestial oriflamme before the eyes 
of his disciples. We find it illustrated in 
the characters of the men He first called 
and gathered about Him. They are al- 
ways advancing from a feeble outset to 
self-masteries of exceeding dignity and 
splendid triumphs of martyr-endurance 
and martyr-trust, ready to be offered at 
the end of a finished course. And thus 
we discover the life of God in the soul of 
man to be equally simple in its early mo- 
tions, steady in its subsequent workings, 
and sublime in its immortal issues. 

Indeed, the very name we give it, call- 
ing it a " life," which is Christ's own 
name for it, contains a confession of its 
natural ordination to grow. The universe 
offers no example of an organic exist- 
ence remaining stationary or motionless. 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 101 

Causes that produce inertia or restrict 
movement produce deformity, disease, 
and, finally, disorganization or death. 
All we know of moral life makes its pres- 
ervation dependent on its activity, and, 
in finite natures, on its increase. Taking 
it in its elements, our acquaintance with 
men teaches us that this is true of each 
separate spiritual grace or virtue. Unless 
there is growth in faith, purity, forbear- 
ance, self-control, self-sacrifice, there is 
going on a process of decline. 

But far more conclusive than observa- 
tion, or philosophy, or analogy, is the 
character of the source from which this 
life is drawn. It is the life of Christ 
Himself, indwelling, in whom is all the 
fullness of the living God. We receive 
of Him grace upon grace, being made, 
through our union with Him, partakers 
of the Divine nature. There can be no 
limit, cessation, abridgment, or pause in 
this living of Christ within us, except by 
a contradiction of Him, or death. Till 
the measure of the mortal stature is filled 



102 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

with Him ; nay, till the mortal measure 
itself is exchanged for the celestial, and 
that also receives of his fullness, there 
must be a " daily increase in his Holy 
Spirit, more and more." 

In a single view, even the most com- 
prehensive, it would not be possible to 
observe all the characteristic features of 
this progressive sanctification. A few 
may be noted, and this will contribute to 
the completion of the subject. 

1. One invariable mark of increasing 
spiritual vitality will be a more habitual 
consciousness of an intimate relation to 
the person of Christ. At first, the soul 
is constrained to its homeward striving 
and its choice of the better part by a sense 
of want, which, as we have seen, while it 
is very real, and of a Divine origin, is 
somewhat indefinite. The mind is guided 
largely by an external authority. It is 
convinced that all good lies in the direc- 
tion it is taking. It asks what it shall do 
to be saved or safe, and is answered, and 
it understands that the answer proceeds 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 103 

from the Son of God. But these are not 
the higher states or riper stages of a 
Christian's experience. They are not 
meant to be entirely satisfactory. As 
you go on, you learn that both the new 
life and the satisfaction of it comes from 
a personal Friend. Abstraction, general- 
ities, rational inferences as to what is 
right, human persuasions, occupy rela- 
tivelyjess room in your mind. To speak 
of the importance of religion, the truth 
of Christianity, the assuming of religious 
responsibilities, would be to deal in 
phrases correct enough in their way, no 
doubt, but weak as expressions of what 
is going on and growing up within you. 
As your thoughts are more with the 
Son of Man in his ministry, his suffering, 
his glory, your inner life will take on a 
peculiar* freshness, vigor, and reality. 
You will think less of his particular of- 
fices, perhaps, than of Him ; less of his 
exactions than of his affections. Your 
times of devout retirement will be like 
dialogues with Him. His words and ap- 



104 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

pointments will be precious as cords and 
stays drawing you to Himself, and making 
you at home there. You will ask your- 
self, in doubtful matters or places, how 
this or that would suit his mind, or har- 
monize with his presence. Not that his 
visible presence, or any strained attempt 
to realize it, will be needful. The Apos- 
tles, when writing to the Churches and 
preaching the Gospel, seem to hav.e had 
as quick and clear a sense of his being 
with them as if they were in the group 
at Bethany, or in the upper chamber at 
Jerusalem. Yet there will be an in- 
creased feeling of his being really close at 
hand, and his face, marvelous in its ten- 
derness, is almost , seen. Doubtless it is 
for this reason that, in the more advanced 
and thoroughly-disciplined frames of true 
spirituality, there is a genuine desire for 
more frequent communions at the Supper, 
quite removed from all affectation or fa- 
naticism. All this, too, is far apart from 
those excited visions and familiar appeals 
to the Saviour which sometimes accom- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 105 

pany overwrought religious demonstra- 
tions, and render them in their unreality 
specially disgusting. It is the calm and 
blessed fruit of long-continued watching 
and holy endeavor where the noise and 
surface agitations of an eager, secular 
world have less and less part to play, and 
where a hallowed nurture at the foot of 
the altar, in the stillness of the closet, and 
commonly under the shadow of some sor- 
row, has chastened and tranquillized the 
spirit till it not only dwells with Christ, 
but hides itself in Him. 

2. As the better life deepens and ex- 
pands, there is also a steady alteration in 
the relative proportions of fear and love, 
as motive-powers in Christian living. 
The fear will not totally vanish, even in 
the highest type of piety ; but it will 
become that confiding and reverential 
fear which is in accord with the sweetest 
filial affection. The love will not wax 
overbold or presumptuous, so as to forget 
the line that runs between things allowed 
and things forbidden ; but it will set the 



106 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

heart at liberty from bondage, and make 
obedience free-footed and joyous. Ebal 
and Gerizim do not forsake their seats. 
But whereas the man just shaking him- 
self clear of his old life will often be found 
saying, " Must I do this ? " or, " What 
will happen to me if I do not? "- — doing 
some good things only because of a threat 
of evil if they are left undone, — the more 
mature disciple will rather move forward 
to the duty or the sacrifice with an 
unquestioning conviction, — which in fact 
shuts every question up, — that there 
God will be with him, and hence he can- 
not go elsewhere. His soul is so affianced 
to righteousness that, in the instinct of a 
nobler nature, he recoils from known sin 
as ordinary men shun dishonor. In fact, 
sin becomes a dishonor to the Best Friend. 
Law remains, though liberty is gained, 
for law and liberty are not opposites ; the 
slavery of self-will is the real antagonist 
of law, as license is the foe of liberty. 
And therefore it is one of the signs of a 
spirit that has risen well up toward over- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 107 

coming the world, when the will sponta- 
neously acts so much in line with the will 
of God that there is no galling of the 
neck under the yoke, and but little calcu- 
lation of the consequences of disobedience. 
Believe, my friend, in this oneness of pur- 
pose and life with God ; pray for it as a 
part of the Christian victory, and expect 
it as a part of the Christian sanctifica- 
tion. 

3. Along with the reconciliation of 
duty with inclination, there comes a recon- 
ciliation of small and even comparatively 
insignificant duties with the great princi- 
ples of Christian allegiance. I scarcely 
know a surer test of real growth into 
Christ than this, — a more infallible touch- 
stone to distinguish a true advance in 
holiness from the higher life of mere sen- 
timentalism. Something is wrong where 
claims to exalted spirituality, or to a 
superior freedom from temptation, even 
though it be attributed to the special 
power of Jesus Christ, are accompanied 
by no corresponding deliverance from 



108 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

petty domestic foibles, from ill-temper, 
vanity, obstinacy, contempt of those that 
differ, or indolence. The grandeur of a 
triumphant faith is in the uniformity of 
its operation, in its easy condescension to 
homely drudgeries, in the quiet self-sacri- 
fice with which it takes the stumbling- 
blocks and the burdens from others' paths 
and shoulders, in the Christlike lowliness 
that renders the hour with God on the 
mountain-top not an excuse for neglecting 
common-place services to our neighbors 
but a secret preparation for their more 
punctual and faithful performance. Too 
many old habits, to be sure, cling about 
our crude beginnings of the new life to 
allow this divinest beauty of holiness to 
appear at once. But it is capable of in- 
definite unfolding and brightening. As 
sure as Christ is formed in you, it will 
glorify all your manhood. Is there noth- 
ing inspiring in that certainty ? Add to 
this another practical aspect of this ser- 
vice, as the Church in its purity holds it, 
although a perverted religionism has fear- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 109 

fully obscured it, namely, that ceaseless 
and systematic works, by every Chris- 
tian, for his brother-man, are just as 
truly a part of the fruits of his faith as 
inward purification, and will not the way 
of life look to you the way of light ? Is 
it in a lofty style of humanity to be indif- 
ferent to it ? 

4. Another mark of the increase of the 
blessed life of Christ in the disciple is an 
increase of serenity. Agitations belong- 
to earlier periods ; the slender stream is 
tossed about and troubled by trivial 
impediments, frets at every little rough- 
ness on its edges, bubbles and babbles at 
the stones in its bed, and even seems to 
foam sometimes at sudden accessions to 
its own fullness. But running on its way 
it gathers contributions to its force. Gain- 
ing volume and depth it gains tranquillity. 
Slight hindrances are borne silently away 
before its strength, and it moves in maj- 
esty because its motion is undisturbed. 
So a German saint, describing in his diary 
the later results of a long spiritual con- 



110 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

flict, the final issue of a slow inward strug- 
gle, borrows Isaiah's image, and says, 
" Now was my peace like a river." The 
anxiety of religious beginners is of many 
kinds. There is the anxiety of crude 
ideas, of undisciplined emotions, of morbid 
introspection, of comparison with others, 
of fear for the future, and distrust of God. 
In a true, healthy growth, under the 
Divine nurture of God's House, you see 
less and less of this spiritual worrying. 
In the character of Jesus Christ nothing 
is more marvelously beautiful than the 
peace; and, in the things of the Spirit, 
peace comes by power. The more He 
gives us of his life, the more He gives us 
of his repose. To a large extent this 
peace consists in a superiority to the irri- 
tations and annoyances of our common 
lot, as well as to its heavier sorrows. In 
respect to the former, we call it patience, 
which is sublime, in God and in man. 
In the latter, we call^it submission. In 
the case of some eager, impetuous, and 
yet sensitive natures, it requires a long 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. Ill 

practice and ripe attainments to be 
patient with one's self, — almost as much 
as to be submissive to God. This evil 
spirit of unrest cometh not forth except 
by prayer and fasting ; but when it is 
gone, a singular loveliness is seen on the 
face of the healed soul, and you confess 
that the power which, even in a lifetime 
of holy discipline, can work out a trans- 
figuration so glorious, must be no other 
than the power of the Son of God. 

5. In nothing, however, is the Chris- 
tian's progress in holiness more signally 
manifest than in his prayers. They 
become more and more the natural expres- 
sion of the new life. At first, prayer is 
either a part of the exercise of religious 
obedience or else the indispensable means 
of obtaining some desired benefit. Ac- 
cordingly, persons immature in faith and 
love have a great deal of difficulty with 
their prayers. No complaint is oftener 
poured into the ears of spiritual pastors 
and teachers than that of unsatisfactory 
devotions. It takes different forms. Some- 



112 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

times the heart is cold ; the hour of daily 
retirement is unwelcome ; the closet has 
no attractions ; the words are nothing but 
words ; the whole transaction is a dead 
form, or even a mockery. At other times 
the disappointment is that the special peti- 
tions are apparently not answered. Again 
and again the cry goes up, and no evi- 
dent sign is given of a hearing God. 
The request is not granted ; the bad habit 
is not broken ; temptation does not die ; 
doubt is not removed ; the favor sought 
is not bestowed ; the comfort is not felt, 
and it is questioned whether the Com- 
forter himself draws near ; it is as if the 
supplication were driven back from a 
shut up heaven and fell like a leaden 
weight upon the breast. The baffled sup- 
pliant keeps on entreating, rather because 
the letter of the command is plain, or 
because he knows it must somehow be 
well for him to be on his knees *bef ore his 
Maker, than because he is refreshed. 
With the increase of life these sources of 
misery disappear ; or, if they are after- 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 113 

ward reopened, the distress is short-lived, 
being generally due to some temporary- 
disorder of the inward man. Christ 
being more completely formed within, 
the believer's seasons of communion with 
the Father spread themselves more widely 
through his days and nights. He passes 
very frequently, almost unconsciously, and 
by imperceptible gradations of feeling, 
from his ordinary existence among the 
things of this world into direct converse 
with that Friend who is ever nearest, 
while also most high and most mighty. 
The current of adoring thought flows on 
in joyous, satisfying concord with the 
Eternal Will. We do not stop, perhaps, 
to shape every aspiration into articulate 
speech, but we yield to the Divine breath, 
and move whithersoever the Spirit that 
maketh intercession moves. In such 
measure as may be, the disciple is in the 
Mount with the Master. Those wonder- 
ful words of the Communion Office are 
realized, " That we may evermore dwell 
in Him, and He in us." As the Lord 

8 



114 STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

Himself sometimes, to the very last, offered 
up particular entreaties, so it will daily 
be with his most spiritually-minded fol- 
lowers. But the communion will not end 
with these. A larger and larger share 
of devotion will consist in thanksgiving 
and praise, — a sure mark of spiritual 
growth. Some new blessing, — a victory 
of faith, a fresh beam of light f ailing from 
heaven on the path, — will as often stir 
the soul to its heavenly conversation as a 
trial, loss, or throb of pain. There will 
be no anxious concern about answers, for 
the felt blessedness of the act is itself an 
answer. There is no doubt that God will 
hear, because it is known that He listened 
before his child called. May not some- 
thing like this be the meaning of the 
prayer that is " without ceasing ? " It is 
as Mr. Coleridge strikingly said, the lofti- 
est action of the spirit of man. It is hid- 
ing in the pavilion of the Most High, 
and resting under the shadow of his 
wings. I do not believe you will always 
be " indifferent " to the greatness of the 
action, or the stillness of the rest. 



STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 115 

My dear friend, I have gladly responded 
to your candid questions, endeavoring, 
without assumption, to comfort and help 
you, as the Church of God comforts and 
helps her children. If I have come short 
of the scope of your inquiry, or gone 
beyond it, I am sure you will pardon me, 
for the love I bear you. One is your 
Master, even Christ. Turn from all other 
leaders to Him. Go to Him by the old 
and everlasting way. Try all teachers 
by Him, and by the rule of the Faith 
once for all delivered to the saints. Be 
true to yourself. And I am persuaded 
that you will yet be found not only believ- 
ing but alive in your faith, and heartily 
confessing that nothing is able to separate 
you from the love of God, which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I am, most cordially and affectionately 
your fellow disciple, F. D. H. 



y£ 



vl 



Steps ,,, 

to 



3 Ctfinfl f aitii 






«<d 








QBisUop Huntington 



GUIDE TO A DEVOUT LIFE. 

Being Counsels to the Confirmed. By the Rev. G. H. Wilkinson, 
M.A. Paper covers ; 25 cents. Bound with "What the Bible says 
about Prayer," in best cloth, black and gold, 75 cents. 

A carefully systematized plan of directions, which, for sound sense 
and real piety, we have never seen equaled. — A n English Church 
Paper. 

Will be found to be among the very best and most useful of devo- 
tional books. — The Churchtnan. 

It is, without exception, the best book of the kind I have ever seen, 
and it would be difficult, it seems to me, for any one to make a better. 
— A City Rector. 

BREAK UP YOUR FALLOW GROUND. 

A Help to Self- Examination. By the Rev. G. H. Wilkinson, 
M. A. Paper covers ; 20 cents. 

COME TO THE MISSION. 

A Leaflet for Distribution at Mission Services. By the Rev. G. H. 
Wilkinson, M. A. From the sixtieth thousand of the English 
Edition. Price, per hundred, $1.50. 

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT PRAYER. 

Questions relating to Prayer answered in the Words of the Bible, 
with References. By G- W. Moon. Paper, 34 1 ages ; 10 cents. 

LENTEN DISCIPLINE. 

By the Rev. H. A. Yardley, Chaplain and Professor in the Berke- 
ley Divinity School. Paper ; 8 cents. 

Setting forth, in an attractive form, the value of Retirement, Self- 
Denial, and Special Religious Exercises at this season. 

HELPS TO A HOLY LENT. 

By the Rt. Rev. F. D. Huntington, D. D., Bishop of Central 
New York. Third edition. i6mo, 208 pages ; $1.25. 

A rich treasury filled with beautiful, living thoughts, the power and 
attraction of which will be confessed by all who give the work due 
examination. — Churchman. 

STEPS TO A LIVING FAITH. 

Being Letters to an Indifferent Believer. A Tract for Parish use. 
By the Bishop of Central New York. Paper ; 25 cents. 

Sent by mail, postage-paid, on receipt of price. 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 
CHURCH PUBLISHERS, 

713 BROADWAY, New York. 



'3fc 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township'. PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



fit 



■^y*/ 












WV/YV.,y. 



/W'Mnv.VA 









y^. 



«UMyM 



?pw^Pp^p 



m 






mm 



'um^M 






^Sttiii 



wwu 



Il/I W /w ; •' i 












wwrm 



mm 



'WWUWWi 



'iWiiWs 



^ i- ,y» AUWiHv 



Mfi 



vww 



WV\JW 



vvv vv, iv / 'yy<: 



life 






WSBiPiWSi 






r v ^ w , - 



/W w^v 



luvvuyi 



;«wa 



ajwW; 



